Towards Developmentally Informed School Climate Research

Abstract School climate is a well-researched area, with decades of empirical studies underscoring its importance for students across life stages. Similarly, a wealth of developmental research on stage-environment fit theory has shown how the demands of an environment intersect with developmental needs and capacities. However, these two topics are insufficiently linked, limiting our understanding of how school climate could and should be developmentally informed. This integrative review of 140 articles tries to bridge this gap by connecting research in these two areas. We focus on the main categories of school climate: safety, relationships, teaching and learning, and the institutional environment, and use early adolescence (middle school) as a sample stage. We then link key needs of this developmental period: autonomy, identity development, and intimacy, and consider how the four components of school climate could better support these three developmental needs, to create a better stage-(school)environment fit. By framing school climate components around the specific needs and capacities of young adolescents, we identify ways in which middle school environments, from physical safety to interpersonal relationships, could be more developmentally-informed. This, in turn, can advance the field of school climate, to more explicitly consider developmental stage, and help produce school climates that better support healthy development.